This invention herein pertains generally to improvements in the cassette art, and especially to improved means for maintaining magnetic tapes, optical tapes and the like in a confined and stable configuration.
The practice of retaining a tape upon which sound characteristics have been stored and from which such characteristics can be readily recalled by dynamic means has become popular in view of the ease with which such tapes can be handled, particularly in the form of cassettes. Some cassettes structures have a single core system in which a tape is simply wound off a rotatable core portion and taken up on another portion of a core after having passed through a mechanism having reproducing means. Most cassette structures have two cores upon which a tape is wound in such a manner that one core winds as the other core unwinds so that a tape-connecting portion is exposed to the reproducing mechanism of the machine. In either a single core or a double core system the relatively confined spacial considerations of such cassettes place relatively strict limitations upon the amount of tape which can be physically stored therein. In order to house a sufficient quantity of tape within the cassette, it is necessary to make the tape as thin as feasible. It follows that this creates a number of problems for such exceedingly thin and delicate tape structures such as their tendency to yield or stretch and even to fracture and break. Further, there is oftentimes a noticeable tendency to oscillate or vibrate longitudinally during a playing operation. Moreover, a thin and delicate tape structure has the propensity on occasions to wind itself around any protrusion, capstan or like member resulting in a tangled mass of tape with subsequent jamming of the cassette and machine.